


The Metamorphosis

by Melo_Mapo



Series: War & Peace [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Intercrural Sex, Masturbation, Masturbation in Bathroom, Max is an awkward turtle, Max is good with kids, Mutual Masturbation, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, The Wives ship Max/Furiosa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:04:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7207013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melo_Mapo/pseuds/Melo_Mapo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this sequel to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we pick Max & Furiosa up where we left them, and follow them as they try their hand at a relationship. </p><p>Also, Max shaves, and that changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bbcsherlockaddict](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockaddict/gifts).



> I really want to write sexy times for these two, but they'll need a bit more build up first. We'll get there, I swear.

Max wakes slowly. His head is pounding like after an insolation or a night of drinking. Seeing as he’s in the shade – he can tell so much through his closed eyelids – and can’t take alcohol in his mouth, it’s a tad strange.

But he doesn’t feel injured, and despite the hard floor, he feels warm. Safe.

He dares to open his eyes and is greeted first by a wall of ochre stone. He’s inside the Citadel then. It’s blessedly dark, and as his eyes adjust and he awakes fully, memories flood him. Being chased through the desert, his motorcycle out of gas, the fight, the fall, the drug. Feeling wrapped in cotton, the world twice removed but still present, cruel. And then the cart. Time, inconsistent. Pulling the cart. Sleeping outside, piled with the other slaves for warmth, like dogs. The cart. Some food, some water, not enough, but hunger’s an old friend. The cart. Towers in the distance, crowned with greenery, the Citadel! There’s an auction, some known faces, and Max cringes, shame now crushing as he remembers the girls, Toast, and Capable, and The Dag, seeing him chained. Again.

 

Furiosa.

 

His memories stop for a second on her determined face as she aims a smoking gun at the slavers, one of them a body, still warm, a bleeding third eye smack in the middle of her forehead. It’s the first thing he’d felt in a while through the haze of the drug, the jolt in his guts from seeing her again, healthy, and fiercer than ever.

 

The shame in the present comes back when he remembers the dancing. _What was he thinking?!_ Nothing. He wasn’t thinking: he was high as a fucking kite, busy basking in a reborn sense of safety now that he was back at the Citadel, with Furiosa and the girls. And the music… He’d known some of the songs, somewhere deep down, and even some silly choreography he had led some skinny kids through. Fully himself, he would have fled from those reminders of before… Before. Drugged, he had enjoyed it, too happy to hear the music to feel melancholy or nostalgia. He’d danced with the girls, and they’d been beautiful and whole too, and The Dag radiant as a young mother. More people had come, and he’d danced with many, but he remembers dancing with Furiosa the best.

 

Maybe because the drug had mostly wore off by then, or maybe because it was _her_. Drugged, everything had been simpler. He’d seen her dance in the crowd, and he’d made his way to her. He had caught her arm, and she had danced with him. He had remembered some swing moves, had twirled her around. He had wondered what she would look like in a dress, skirt flowing as they would dance, and it was the sheer incongruity of the thought that had finally brought him back to himself fully.

 

She had known right away, had pulled him from the panic, from the crowd, from the noise. In her impersonal room, sitting on the hard mattress, his mind had been strangely sharp now that the haze had lifted but that the Ghosts hadn’t come back yet. They had bantered. Maybe even flirted? Max had not been sure, had not chanced it. He had left after all, all those months ago, because, out of all the people he’d tried to save through the years, she had been the first one in a long time that had felt personal. They had talked of hope, of redemption, and he had believed. He had wanted it for himself: the redemption, the Green Place, the woman.

 

He had left many times before, preferring to be remembered as a hero than a madman, but this time he had fled, because the temptation to stay had been great. And now… Now she took him to her bed, her _real_ bed, an alcove dug at mid-height in the rock wall of a bigger room. Max turns his head, slowly, and there she is, working on something delicate spread on a blanket on the ground of the main space. She is sitting on a cushion, wearing cotton shorts and a white tank top, both artificial arms hanged on the wall behind her. Her feet are bare, and she’s using her toes as the extra fingers she has lost. The main room has several round windows on one wall, and she is sitting right inside an oval of bright light. Now that he notices it, the alcove, the main room, the windows, the shelves dug in the walls, everything is spherical, all corners rounded. Max understands at first sight why she chose the space for herself: it is like a cocoon, tucked away from the bustle of the Citadel, yet well connected. He went in one door yesterday, and can spot at least one other entrance to the room from the bed, and provided you have a long enough rope, the windows could also work as an escape route.

 

Max makes to get up, and his back cracks dramatically. The cracking itself isn’t painful, but the movement rekindles his migraine and he lets a pained groan escape.

“Sorry, I haven’t found out how to get a mattress in there yet.”

She keeps tinkering with the stuff on the ground as he tries, carefully, to stretch, but by the time his feet are dangling over the edge of the bed, she is standing in front of him, a skin of water in hand:

“Take it easy. Not sure what the drug did to you.”

“Made a fool outta me,” grunts Max before gulping down the offered drink.

He is purposefully not looking at her directly, but he still catches how laugh lines appear at the corner of her eyes, thought she keeps her mouth under check.

“No, it was… er… sweet.”

 _Sweet,_ he thinks, simultaneously abashed and exulted, _she thinks I’m sweet_. She must have read something of his inner conflict on his face, because she adds:

“Better sweet than violent.”

And that is a statement Max wouldn’t touch within ten feet. Letting himself drop to the floor, he walks to the window and looks outside. There’s flat desert as far as the sight goes, so it’s hard to tell which way they’re facing, and what time is it.

“Slept long?”

“The sun is barely up. You should rest more.”

She points at the bed and heads back to her makeshift workshop on the ground. As she sits, Max spots a bundle of blankets and a few other pillows by her, and he realizes she slept on the floor last night. He’s thinking of being indignant, but then he remembers than the bed, for now, is just ground too anyway.

Still, she looks tired, bags under her eyes, shoulders weary.

“What, er, what ‘bout you?”

“Got work to do.”

And she tucks a metal rod between two toes by pushing it in place with her stump, then starts using her flesh hand to attach a second rod to the first. It suddenly dawns on Max that he’s not wearing his brace and that it’s what she’s repairing.

“Don’t… Not urgent.”

She eyes his leg, then his face, eyebrows quirked. He shrug, takes a few easy steps.

“Leg’s good. So I could pull the cart.”

The slavers had made a salve out of the same stuff they drugged him with, and it had worked wonders, especially paired with the good brace he had worn when captured. He didn’t actually need to wear a brace at all times. He had gone month without one before, but after a few falls, and getting stuck limping, slow, vulnerable, he had gotten into the habit of wearing one even when his knee felt okay.

Furiosa looks like she doesn’t believe him one second, so he walks to her, sits on the grand and rolls his pant’s leg. The knee isn’t pretty, and Max is not usually comfortable showing so much of it, but the lady is missing an arm, she knows what a healthy scar looks like, however horrible the original injury.

 

Furiosa drops what she’s doing and cleans her hand on a rag, never mind that it probably is cleaner than his leg even with the grease. She touches him carefully, and mostly Max is sad that the skin there is too mangled for sensation. Still, having her focus on him, like he’s a machine of hers, to care for and repair, has heat rushing in places. She trails her fingertips along the ridge of a scar, measuring the area against her index, precise and thorough, and he can’t take more, grunts, and makes to pull his leg out of her hand, but she holds him still and tssk between her teeth, glancing at his face and doing a double take when she no doubts spots his blushing.

“You still have sensitivity despite the scarring?”

“Nnn-no.”

Her eyes travel down his body to his knee and back, gracefully not stopping at his crotch, though he knows she noticed.

“Oh,” she finally says, and relinquishes control, now also embarrassed.

Max is at a loss. He has never been an awkward teenager: Jesse and him met early on, and it had been as easy as saying hi, love at first sight. Now he feels his lack of experience tenfold, and knows that even if he gets up and back to bed there’s no calming down the situation in his pants, especially with Furiosa in the room. There’s no leaving either: he doesn’t remember the trip well enough not to get lost somewhere. Eventually, it’s the lady herself who comes to his help:

“Washroom’s this way.”

She points to a curtain Max thought was a wardrobe of sorts. Despite being short, he has to bend to pass the threshold, but the room beyond is spacious enough, with a low toilet, a tub dug in the floor big enough for an adult to sit and, miracle of miracles, a network of ugly tubes that indicate running water. Max sits by the tub and unceremoniously shoves his hand in his pants, pulling his cock out.

With Furiosa in her pajamas in the next room, who he can hear shuffling metal parts around, probably working on his brace again, it’s not going to take long. He pictures the attentive look on her face, her fingers grazing his knee, imagines he can feel it, imagines she’s letting her hand explore higher, under the rolled hem of his pants, reaching the fabric of his makeshift underwear, caressing the bulge she finds there, going furth…

  
Oh well. He knew he wouldn’t last long.

 

He licks his hand by habit, tucks himself in, then realizes there’s running water in there and goes for the short rubber tube and bucket that serve as sink. He turns the valve, hears some things creaking, but water never comes.

“Hrmf.”

Furiosa must have been listening, because she contributes from the other side of the curtain:

“Forgot to tell you the water’s a work in progress.”

“Ah.”

Max looks at his hand, shrugs. He wasn’t clean to begin with anyway. He steps out of the bathroom and Furiosa offers:

“Want to sleep more?”

The oval on the ground has barely moved, but he’s quite awake now. The orgasm worked wonders on his headache actually. He shakes his head negatively.

“Breakfast?”

“Already ate.”

It takes her a second to get it and Max wants to bash his head on the wall. What would his mother said if she knew… It’s probably for the best she’s long gone. However, Furiosa only says:

“Ah. Protein?”

Count on her to surprise him. She’s not your typical city-dweller. For, really, it’s a Wastelander thing, not a gender thing. Max doubt Immortan Joe ever knew the taste of his own seed. Max confirms:

“Protein.”

She hums, thinking.

“Does it count if it was already yours, though?”

Funny, Max never looked at it that way. Unspent sperm probably just returns its ingredients to the body, no?

“Hmm. Ok to breakfast, then.”

Furiosa acquiesces, grabs her clothes from the ground and her arm from its nail and disappears in the washroom for a minute.

 

When she comes back, it’s like she shouldered her role at the same time as the prosthesis. She holds herself straighter, her belts and straps tight, and there’s something stern and determined in her eyes, like she’s going to battle against the day.

Max likes the previous Furiosa better, but he knows that in the world on the other side of the secret tunnel, only the tough Furiosa has a chance at survival. So he straightens his own back, breathes deep, and hopes breakfast isn’t insects. Beyond that, he has no idea what the day has in stock for him.

“Ready?” asks Furiosa.

He grunts.

“So let’s go.”

She takes him to the second door, the one they didn’t come in through last night, and, as she is opening it, she turns back:

“Oh, and remind me to stop at a real washroom on our way there. You smell a tad.”


	2. Chapter 2

Max’s first day at the Citadel goes… fine.

Breakfast isn’t insects, but mice. The Citadel has plenty of those skittering around, apparently, and they are a consistent part of the local diet. They’re a little bony, but it’s protein, and they serve a light gruel soup to make it go down easier, so that’s fine with him.

 

They are sitting with the ex-Wives – Furiosa calls them the Sisters, now. Toast makes a light remark about Furiosa’s room being empty, but the General evades answering. Capable then wonders if they should set up a room for Max, and he grunts noncommittally. The Dag seals the deal by gliding to their table and announcing Medical reassigned the ex-slaves, and that if Max doesn’t want to room with one of them, he’ll have to share with one of the four women present. Seeing how Capable and Toast already share a room, and how The Dag has an infant in hers, that doesn’t leave much choice, and with much not-so-covert glances and elbowing, the three girls decide Max will have to room with Furiosa. The lady in question sighs, not dupe for a second, and accepts, ‘but only if it’s ok with him’. Hoping to hide the flutter in his gut, Max nods slowly: that’s fine with him.

 

Max isn’t sure what’s the program for the day, and is planning on shadowing Furiosa, but as they are finishing breakfast, a War Pup comes to fetch The Dag: some water pipe broke in the gardens, and they need her to tell them what to do with the soggy mess. Plopping her son on Max’s lap, she runs out after him. For a minute Max’s brain quits on him, and he’s waiting for the Ghosts to come, but everything stays quiet. Capable and Toast didn’t even notice, they are talking about the Council and cadavers. Only Furiosa is looking at him, but her face shows nothing, and she’s certainly not volunteering to grab Little Joe. So Max pulls Little Joe’s plate and spoon to himself, and feeds the kid the rest of his gruel, grunting in the right places as Joe babbles at him in between mouthfuls. It’s not real conversation, so that’s fine with Max.

 

By the time the child is done, Capable and Toast are gone. Hmm. When Max tries to hand the toddler to Furiosa, there’s panic on her face, so he gives up. _Looks like you’re stuck with me, kiddo_ , he thinks, watching Little Joe bang his clay bowl on the table, unconcerned with the situation at hand. With his white-blond hair and quiet demeanour, the child is thankfully nothing like his Sprog, and quite easy to take care off, if Max is honest. They do end up trailing Furiosa as she does her rounds, checking on the advancement of construction on a new rig, listening to reports from the night’s watch, and sending scouts to check that the slavers are well and truly gone. If people are surprised to see a hairy, raggedy man follow Furiosa with a toddler on his hip, they don’t show it. At most, War Boys will come and coo – Chrome! Shiny! – at the kid as they tickle his feet. That’s fine with Max.

 

The kid gets hungry around midday, so Max leaves Furiosa and finds his way back to the mess hall. Empty of people, the room looks bigger, with its five long tables made of scrap rocks and metals. He sneaks into the kitchen, and finds men and women busy preparing washing and cutting vegetables. There are also fruits in a basket on a table, and the kid should probably have some, to avoid scurvy, so Max heads for it. He barely took a step that a disfigured man, who looks like a War Boys grown into adulthood, stops him.

“Hey you! No stealing food!”

Max grunts and picks up Little Joe from his hideout behind Max’s legs, brandishing the toddler in front of him like a shield. The guy is grumbling, rubbing the lumps on his neck in reflection, when a small, longhaired brunet steps around him:

“That’s fine, Ace. Little Joe needs the food.”

The man relents and goes back to shouting orders to his kitchen boys & girls. Max puts the child down and is left facing the last one of the girls he helped save, the one who’s thin like a bird, and sings like one too.

“Been wondering where you were.”

The girl smiles, soft and tremulous.

“I’m busy at meal times, and I like to stay close to the kitchen. I live here, now.”

She points at a small staircase that leads to a mezzanine. From the ground, Max can only see sacks of grain and flour, but the girl is small, so a bed for her could be tucked away anywhere. Furiosa isn’t the only one who needs to find a den to feel safe at night, he guesses. Max wouldn’t have picked the kitchen but, hey, at least if she gets the munchies at night, food isn’t too far.

They look at each other for a while, but it’s not uncomfortable, and she smiles again, with more confidence:

“You need a haircut, Max.”

The man starts a bit. They all use his name here, and it’s strange to be known, and to be fussed about. “You should room with Furiosa, Max.” “Your beard is out of control, Max.” “You stinks, Max.” Well, they have a point. He does need a good scrubbing. And having people worry about him is a nice change. Really, it’s fine with him.

 

After Little Joe has been fed – strawberries! They still exist! – Max leaves him with Cheedo to take to the Council Room. She is on shift there next anyway, and will return the kid to her mother there. Following the girl’s instruction, Max crosses to a different tower where baths were built for everybody to enjoy. Max is told the water gets used on the crops, and to limit contamination of it, so he has to scrub himself as clean as possible with a wet rag before he can take a short shower. Once fully clean from the shower, he finally gets to the pool, where, among vapours and strange bodies, one can steep in sun-warmed water to their leisure. Max doesn’t have the time to feel self-conscious about his tattooed back or his busted knee: everybody here has had a rough life, and he’s far from being the most misshapen. Rather than being disgusted at each other, people seem to actually discuss their deformities, like you would the weather. “Billy’s been giving trouble ‘tis past week.” “Mediocre, man, Karla’s quiet these days.” In that context, Max doesn’t even rank as interesting enough to talk to, especially with his back to the wall, and that’s fine with him.

 

Max meets Furiosa again at dinner. Since the Citadel only eats twice a day, dinner is served early, and Max, who could eat a whole dingo, is quite happy with it. He grabs a bowl, and gets poured some hearty soup as well as handed a piece of bread. When he navigates through the room, trying to reach the table where he spotted The Dag’s white hair and Furiosa’s shaved one, people notice him more than this morning and a few War Boys point at him and talk animatedly – Max overhears one of their obnoxious ‘Chrome!’ but fails to understand what’s getting people so excited. He shaved and trimmed his hair, okay, and the washerman gave him new clothes, because once the dirt had been cleaned off the old ones, there were only rags left. Maybe it’s the leather jacket. He shouldn’t have indulged when picking it, but the guy said no one wanted it anyway, and it fits perfectly. The washerman was even helpful and provided other matching clothing, though the boots are mismatched and the pants have rips on the thighs.

He’s a bit stressed by the attention when he reaches the table were Furiosa and the girls are sitting, and it gets worse: Toast opens large eyes, and elbows Capable, making Furiosa and The Dag turn around, and The Dag gapes at him - he can see half-chewed food in her mouth, dammit! – so his tone is not very polite when he barks:

“What!”

He isn’t known for raising his voice, so the girls quit staring immediately, instead looking up to Furiosa for help, but the woman is busy detailing Max from the toes up, and oh, he’s a tad hot now. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked all black clothing, it’s no good when out in the sun. Never mind that he’s currently inside. When Furiosa reaches his face, there’s a heat there that can’t be mistaken.

“You clean up nice, _Max_.”

She says his name with a je-ne-sais-quoi that only raises Max’s inner temperature, and he’s pretty sure he’s blushing by now, which is not helped by the girls looking back and forth between them two like it’s the most entrancing game of ball. Again, it’s Furiosa who saves him by breaking their stare-off and turning back to her bowl, and scoots to leave him space to sit between her and The Dag. Thankfully, the girls go back to discussing a submitted policy to use their deads as fertilizer rather than burying them, and Furiosa contributes comment here and there, which leaves Max free to slurp his soup in peace and, eventually, to help Little Joe drink his, which is fine with him.

 

By the time dinner is over, Max is nervous again, not sure what Furiosa will want to do and if she’ll want him to stick around or not. He’s not sure if he can find her den alone, but despite the early hour, the food is making him drowsy. He must look it too, because after having told them she’ll join them shortly in the Council Room, Furiosa gestures for him to follow and leads him through the Citadel once more. They take the entrance they used this morning, the one by the mess hidden in the back of a closet room otherwise full of junk, broken tableware and chairs waiting for a need to be repaired and put back in use.

This time, Max pays careful attention to the tunnels they take, and which turn in them, and, when they get to Furiosa’s door, he’s relatively confident that he could find his way back out. Once they’re inside, she tells him he can use her tools to work on his brace or go to bed, whatever he likes, and not to wait up for her. They’re voting on that dead body issue tonight, and the debates might take a while. He grunts, she leaves. He looks two seconds at the brace, lying in pieces on the ground, and decides to call it a day. The pile of cushions and blankets in the alcove looks more comfortable than this morning, and the lack of mattress won’t stop a guy who’s slept outdoors for the past months. Max methodically takes off his jacket, boots, and pants before climbing in the bed and burrowing. Comfortably tucked in, and sans headache, Max looks around the alcove with more attention than in the morning and concludes that it probably used to be a granary or pantry: there are shelves dug along the curved walls, but the ceiling isn’t high enough to stand, and the someone kneeling or sitting at the entrance would have everything in reach. It would also fits with being a good meter and a half higher than the main room’s floor: to avoid vermin getting in. As Max slowly fades into sleep, he thinks that, whatever purpose the alcove originally had, it’s now a bed, and that’s fine with him.


	3. Chapter 3

When Furiosa steps in, tiptoeing in the moonlight so she won’t wake Max, she immediately realizes her mistake: this morning, she threw her pillows and blankets back with the others, in the larder-made-bed, and he's rolled in all of them and deeply asleep, the fool.

 

It’s past midnight, her shoulders ache, and she doesn’t want to trek back to her impersonal room, where there’s no War Boys guarding the lack of door because she wasn’t supposed to sleep there tonight.

 

 _Ah, smeg it_ , she thinks. She’ll try her luck at waking him up.


	4. Chapter 4

Max’s second day at the Citadel is… stupendous.

 

First, he wakes up way too hot, because, somehow, Furiosa is sleeping by his side. He must make a surprised grunt because, her harsh tones reach him from where she’s back to him:

“You schlanger fought me in your sleep when I tried to grab a blanket, and I ended up stuck in it, and stuck with you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

“Ah. Sorry?”

The sound she makes is closer to a cat’s hiss than to human voice, and Max scrabbles to entangle them from the treacherous blankets, though the unforeseen consequence is that he ends up skin to skin with a disgruntled Furiosa once they come off. She dives off the bed, slams through the room, straps herself in clothing and prosthesis in record time, and storms off the room. Max, feeling twitchy, decides to forego breakfast to work on his brace. Furiosa is angry with him.

 

When he makes it downstairs, back in his brace, he can’t find Cheedo in the kitchen, and the Ace won’t give him food. When he finds his way to the Council Chamber, the two Members on duty are people he doesn’t know. They tell him where The Dag is and, when he finds her, she’s annoyed at him: apparently Little Joe liked being carried around so much yesterday he’s been crying all morning, asking for the Bear Man. But when Max goes to see him, the brat is sulking and won’t let Max pick him up. Apparently, he’s not as cool without the beard. Or ‘chrome’ as the War Boys would say. In the end, Max leaves, redirected to Toast and the workshop, with The Dag and Little Joe angry with him.

 

When he reaches the workshop, it’s and assault on the senses. Yesterday, with Furiosa, they just looked from above, checked work was getting done. Now, he’s in the belly of the beast, sweating men and women hammering away, melting metal, tinkering with roaring motors. The heat, the noise, the smell of gasoline and fumes, send Max reeling for a short while before Toast’s short stature comes into focus. The girl is in her element, and she took to the machines like she took to the guns, back on the Fury Road: getting shit done.

Max isn’t too bad of a mechanic himself, he managed to keep the interceptor alive all that time, after all. She lets him work on the new rig, and they end up arguing about what would be the best way to incorporate a secondary gas tank. Cleary, an extra wagon one didn’t do them much good last time around: too much of a target, too fragile, easy to detach, and easy to blow in flames. Toast doesn’t like Max’s suggestion to sacrifice some of the main tank’s space, because it would lead them to do more trips, but Max isn’t thrilled by her idea of adding an extra tank on the main structure either: he’s afraid the main tank might not take the weight, because the one they are building right now is a patchwork of thin scraps of metal, rather than being one thick whole piece. She counters that they don’t have the infrastructure to mould that much metal, he reminds her that’s not what he suggested, she groans, frustrated, he takes a step back, she rages, he leaves. Great, now Toast is angry with him.

 

He’s hungry, he feels gross again – sweat and oil never mix well – and when he heads for the baths he’s told everybody is allowed only one shower a week, and that he’ll get to come back next time he has a bath token to show for it.

That’s how Max learns how labour and goods are distributed: you work, you get tokens. A full week of work will get you one bath token, 14 meal tokens, and one bartering token. The later can be traded for resources: leather, cloth, metal, paper, glass, plants. From those resources, people make goods they can then exchange with each other at the weekly market.

Max is astonished at the speed at which the Citadel has been growing, making its own coinage, distributing wealth equally in some sort of communist ideal. He wonders what happens if you are too old or disabled to work. Do they just kill you to grow plants in you belly? What of families with kids? Do the children work, or do the parents starve themselves to get the kids fed? Max heads back to the mess hall for an early dinner, thoughts occupied with doubts and fears of what this seemingly perfect Citadel will soon devolve into. They are no paradises out there, just violence, and he wonders when the Citadel will reach the breaking point, the moment when another tyrant will rise into power.

He spends dinner busy with his darks thoughts, sitting alone, and when he gets up, he realizes he hasn’t enjoyed one bite of his food. When he leaves the room, Max is angry with himself.

 

He decides a bit of fresh air might do him good and he heads for the gardens. It’s quiet up there now that the workers have gone down for dinner. He sits at the edge of a corn field, grass and wildflowers under his butt, and breathes deeply. The stress of the day looses its edges, fades away to something more confortable. It’s no good for him, the anxiety. It brings the Ghosts back. Granted, the Ghosts have saved his skin in some occasions. They know he’s only good to haunt alive, or maybe they’re the voices of his subconscious, and even his subconscious doesn’t want him dead.

Look at him, bringing back words from the Old-World. He wonders were there are now, the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and other psy-s of the Old-World. All dead, most likely. Thinkers is not a breed that does too well for itself out in the Wasteland.

Max shakes his head like a dog, trying to chase the gloom away again. Breathe in, breathe out. Slow and deep. Lying down on his back, he looks as the colours change in the cloudless sky, and as stars start to twinkle. Now that the last of the dust has settled, they can see them again. Humanity won’t go back to space anytime soon, but it’s good to think it’s still there, that it’s something they haven’t managed to mess up.

It smells like soil and nature out there, it’s pleasant, even with the slight putrefying undertone from the compost when the wind turns, and Max is feeling better, less jittery, less nervous. So when he hears soft footfalls cross the grass, he doesn’t start, merely arch his neck to look who’s coming. It’s Capable, her hair a deeper shade of red in the settling darkness.

“Can I?”

She’s pointing at the grass near him. He grunts, make to sit up, but she gently pushes him back to the grass, and soon she’s lying down next to him. For a while, they just rest, and breathe. They both know there’s a conversation on the horizon, but for a while she matches his breathing pattern, unhurried, calm, and he thinks that out of them all, she’s the one with the most patience. She’s good at coaxing out the good in people. She’s the one who, in one day, made a lover out of a war-crazed boy. Max also thinks that the other girls know, and that is why they sent her.

“We missed you at dinner,” she finally says.

First, he wants to snort, because he doesn’t believe it, but, truth is, he missed them too. He doesn’t even know what decision ended up being voted last night, at the Council session that made Furiosa stay up late. The session that made her come back to a room where all the blankets had been stolen by an ungrateful guest who fought her for them when she tried to get them back, and even trapped her in one. But, thinking about it, she’s _Furiosa_. Even rolled in a hundred blankets, she would have given him Hell. And he didn’t even wake up all the way, couldn’t remember it in the morning. Might it be that, rather than wake him up, she let herself be tangled? Could it be that this morning, she was embarrassed rather than angry? What if The Dag, when he had finally showed up, had been worried of not having seen him at breakfast? Had been counting on him to be there as one of the few people she’d entrust her son to? What if Little Joe?… No, Little Joe had genuinely been angry with him, because it had only took him a day to genuinely like Max. And Toast, Toast had immediately given him a job, no questions asked, found him a purpose. She had listened to him, challenged is advice like equals do.

“I’m crap at that stuff.”

Even though he can’t see her face, Max has a feeling Capable is smiling.

“You mean recognizing, what’s it called again… the star stuff?”

Max can’t resist smiling. The girl is playing him like a fiddle.

“Constellations.”

She waits him out.

“And yeah, those too. But I meant livin’ in one spot. Being ’round people.”

“It’s crowed now in there, isn’t it.”

He grunts, a resounding yes.

“Is that were you go, you and Furiosa? Far from people?”

“She’s got a space. It’s quiet.”

Capable doesn’t ask any more sensitive questions, and Max is grateful. The night, and not facing each other, it helps with speaking, but there is stuff he hasn’t even figured out for himself yet, and Furiosa is a big part of that.

She still makes him speak more than he has in a long time. She has so many questions about the Old World, about everything from fridges to fashion, from how hospitals worked to what pets were.

“You mean people fed animals just for their company?”

“Yeah.”

“And they didn’t eat them when they were fat or anything?”

“What? No! They were like… family members or somethin’.”

“Huh. Weeeeeird.”

Max chuckles a bit at that, and she suddenly props herself on an elbow, looking down on his face.

“Do that again!”

“Er, what?”

“That laugh sound!”

“I… uh…”

Dammit. At least the night is definitely dark enough that she won’t see him blush. He can barely see her eyes reflecting the moonlight. She must still guess some of his embarrassment, because she laughs, delighted.

When they go back in and to the Council Room, joining the rest of the girls, the Vuvalini and Furiosa, sitting together in a corner, it’s the first thing she says:

“Max has the shiniest laugh!”

The look of surprise painted on everybody’s face does make Max want to laugh, and the chuckle he lets escape has that surprise turn to shock. Capable starts dancing around the group, clamouring:

“See, see, see!”

One of the Vuvalini is first to burst into laughing, but soon she’s joined by everybody, even, to Max’s own astonishment, by Furiosa, and fuck, isn’t that a sight, that woman with a smile on her face has Max’s guts get heavy with the kind of stuff he hasn’t felt in a while. It’s been so long he scarcely remembers the feeling, and he’s not too sure about naming it yet, this beast churning inside.

 

When they get to bed that night, Furiosa lies next to Max in the alcove, having fairly divided the cushions and blankets in two piles. They are not touching anywhere, both cosy in their separate blankets, but still! She could have taken everything and left him to lie there in the desert’s cold night air that he wouldn’t have minded. As it is, Max barely dares moving as they settle in, and sleep is long to come, though the buzzing under his skin has nothing to do with his restless Ghosts.

 

At the end of the day, it’s still true that the Citadel will face many opportunities to go wrong, but he has to believe. He tried everything else, and look where it led him: imprisoned, enslaved, left for dead, over and over again. Maybe it is time to try his hand at something different, at building rather than just saving. Maybe it time to try staying.

 

Max’s second day at the Citadel? Stupendous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, sexy times in the next chapter. If they let me. *fingers crossed*


	5. Chapter 5

Furiosa had pegged Max for a wild card, and had not been surprised when he had disappeared in the crowd the minute they had been back at the Citadel. Men like that, with heavy pasts and gentle souls, don’t stick around. They’ve been burn too often. So she is amazed at how fast he settles in a routine: they will wake up, go down for breakfast, and then the girls always have something for him to do: work on the Rig and cars, look over old maps and update them, babysit Little Joe, garden in the green house. Once or twice, Cheedo even pulls him in the kitchen, because he seem to remember foods that no one else does, and even has a vague idea as to how to make them. Sometimes, Furiosa wonders how many days he really is, and sometimes, when she has quiche for the first time, she doesn’t give a damn.

 

It’s not all blue sky and gasoline in the tank. There are good days, where Max is patient, and talkative – meaning he makes full sentences. There are bad days, where he will drop what he’s doing before it’s finished and disappear, going places in the Citadel that even Furiosa hasn’t explored yet, and no one knows where he is for hours, days at a time. It makes Furiosa nervous, and she gets cold at night now when he’s not there. On those days, Max comes back from wherever he was with excuses in the shape of little gifts, things he scavenged from long-abandoned empty spaces. There are more blankets appearing on the bed, and a cracked clay bowl serving as a flowerpot on the windowsill of their hideout. Furiosa suspects The Dag gave Max the odd-looking citrus tree inside because it needed some one-on-one attention.

 

There are even worse days, when he’ll get frustrated and obsessed by something: an elusive spot to place on a map, a motor that keeps stalling, plants that won’t grow. Those days, he goes back to grunts, work until he falls asleep where he stands, while being so jumpy no one dares come too close, lest they might get hit by reflex. Those days, Furiosa learns to send him on an errand, out in the wasteland, giving him a fast car and a simple goal: to check out this or that, find out if the Buzzard camp moved west or if the road to Bullet Town is clear. She doesn’t know if it’s driving that unwinds him, or if it’s being out in the open, or maybe both, but he’s good at both, as fine a scout as any War Boy she taught. He’s been surviving out here all that time, after all.

 

Finally, there are also awkward days. They’ve always known how to move around each other, be it to fight, heal, or share space, but sometimes that innate talent seem to fail them. They’ll wake up with too much skin touching, and Max will take a trip to the bathroom that will leave her hot and wanting, which in turn makes her clumsy, and she’ll end up bumping into him, involuntarily smacking him with her metal arm. For some reason, the girls can always tell when it’s one of those days, and they’ll tease them, probably because they think they’re having sex. Furiosa doesn’t want to correct them, because she thinks they ought to at that point, even if she never managed to initiate it – it’s harder when you care, she just learned – and Max is too embarrassed too. Those days, Furiosa finds it hard to focus. It’s clear they’re moving toward _something_ , but she’s not sure what. He’s had a family before, that much is clear: the way he is with kids, and how he’ll make sure expectant mothers eat well. She’s even found him in the mess hall one night, holding back some girl’s hair as she puked her dinner back in her bowl. He’d just said laconic: “How many weeks along? Ten?” She had nodded and he had added: “T’will pass”.

 

She can’t give him family, Immortan made sure of that. She’s not sure what else she has to give. She’s had sex before, has even enjoyed it. She used it as a way to reclaim her body after being a Wife, and as a tool to bring her safety and allies – more than one War Boy has died for her on the battlefield. She could give Max sex, but she knows it would be different with him, and she is not sure how different, and if the difference will be good. She is not brave is the truth, and even though she wants it, she’ll let the awkward days come and go.

 

But today is one of the good days. They moved with each other seamlessly in the morning: Max has taken to helping Furiosa strap her arm, which shortens her dressing time by half. She wouldn’t have accepted the help from anyone else, but he lets her help him with his leg brace. Then they went for breakfast, and Cheedo surprised them with her newest invention, a soft, sweet bread made with butter and milk. She was looking for a name for it, but after the first bite Max said ‘brioche’. Cheedo was disappointed she had not invented it, but the awe on Max’s face when he looked at her made her preen, and the name spread like fire.

Later, down in the workshop, as she’s working on a car design, she overhears a War Boy exclaim ‘brioche!’ at something, and she hopes it catches. She likes it better than ‘chrome’. It’s later still, and there’s a vague smile lingering on her face, but she’s getting frustrated at her own squiggles on the blueprints for the car, when a Pup comes running in.

“General, General! There’s a problem, in the Council Room, with Bearman.”

The Pups have been hanging out with Little Joe too much if they call Max Bearman, she thinks as she runs for the elevator, wondering what’s happening. The Pup, Ben she remembers, doesn’t know anything, he was just sent by Toast.

When she gets to the Council Room, it’s full of War Boys, Milk Mothers, and babies. Furiosa, disconcerted, looks around and catches The Dag waving at her from the map closet. Toast and Capable are standing guard in front of the empty doorframe, blocking sight, and when she passes the threshold Furiosa freezes: sitting on the tiny cot, tear tracks on his face, Max looks two seconds away from fainting. His breathing is laboured and Cheedo, kneeling in front of him, is snapping her fingers in front of his face.

“Look at me, Max, you’re fine, everything’s fine. Breathe with me: in, and out. In, and out. Come on, Max: in, and out.”

She grabs one of his hands, which are gripping the bed frame hard enough for his knuckles to turn white, and wrenches it off before putting it on her own chest, demonstrating her breathing as she keeps gently coaxing him with words. Despite her nickname, Cheedo has always been the least fragile of them all when it came to freak outs, and she’s the best at pulling someone out of it. Furiosa hasn’t had one of those in more than 5 000 days, but she knows she deals with the violence that comes with the Fury Road better than she ever did the violence from the Vault.

“What triggered it?” she asks in a low voice to The Dag.

The woman wrings her hands:

“Showing the War Boys! How to be fathers.”

Furiosa feels angry all of a sudden. They should know _better_. Whatever happened to Max’s family, it can’t good, and putting a baby in his hands… The Dag looks at her face and whines:

“I know, I know, but he was doing so good, showing them how to hold the head, how to bottle feed… A man, a warrior, showing them you can be tender too, it’s good for them.”

Furiosa points to the man on the cot:

“It’s not good for Max.”

Hearing his name, the man, now breathing better and having reclaimed his hand from Cheedo’s grip, feebly intervenes:

“I… eer. ‘M sorry.”

There’s a waves of protests from the Sisters, all trying to apologize. Now that the crisis is averted, Toast and Capable are crowding in the room as well.

“We all used to get them you know, the freak outs,” says Capable.

“I still get them,” adds The Dag.

There’s a collective gasp, and the Sisters turn their attention to the woman.

“What? You never told us!” protests Toast, indignant.

The Dag shrugs.

“They come at night, when Little Joe sleeps. I’m alone with the thoughts then. The crops, the future, Citadel…”

She gestures to encompass the room around them, and beyond.

“Is it really the place for a kid, y’know?”

Furiosa can see that fear reflected on the other Sisters’ faces, so she jumps in:

“Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we have.”

Her remark is met with assent, and Capable, Toast and Cheedo speak over each other in hope of comforting the young mother. Meanwhile, Max is moving slowly, off the bed then towards the door, trying to slip away unnoticed. Furiosa looks straight at him, one eyebrow raised in a sardonic question. He gestures with his thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the Council Room.

“I’ll just… aah, just go…”

The man looks ready to bolt, jitters in full swing, eyes fleeting around the small crowded room without pause. She knows he has a small sack full of dry food and water hidden somewhere. She has one too, though hers is a precaution where his allows him to disappear at a moment’s notice for days at a time, and that’s the last thing Furiosa wants out of that day.

“I’ll come with you.”

He sighs, but admits defeat and hangs his head, like a Pup caught out of bed after curfew. They slink out of the room, exit apparently unnoticed, but Capable gives Furiosa a thumbs-up as she turn back to check on the group. They cross the Council Room in one go, put their boots on, and head for the kitchens where Furiosa half-bullies, half-charms the Ace into giving them enough for an early dinner. Food tokens change hands, and Max gets entrusted with a skin of water, half a loaf of bread, two bananas, 6 slices of roasted eggplant, and 4 meatballs, the last two items carefully packaged in wooden bowls, and the whole of the food placed in a wicker basket.

When Furiosa starts heading for the gardens, Max asks, sullen:

“We’re having a picnic?”

“A what?”

“A picnic.”

Now it is Furiosa’s turn to be sulky:

“I don’t know what a picnic is, Max.”

“Oh.”

The man doesn’t volunteer more information, and Furiosa lets it go. Another Old-World thing, then. When she reaches the gardens, and a good spot on the grass, she sits and invites Max to do so, but he smiles, a bit, and says:

“Wait.”

With that, and with the basket still on his arm, he heads to a nearby greenhouse. He comes back a minute later with a piece of white fabric, the kind they use to protect the more fragile plants from the sun. He carefully lays it down next to her, and starts placing the food on it, arranging it even. When he’s satisfied, he sits on the other side and says:

“That’s a picnic.”

She looks at him, dubious, then back to the food:

“You mean eating outside?”

“Yeah but… nice. Relaxing.”

“Ok. But why the fabric?”

“It’s… err, it’s a tablecloth. For the ground.”

She looks at him some more, unconvinced, and a smile slowly blooms on his face:

“You don’t know what a tablecloth is, do you?”

She shakes her head no. This time he laughs a little.

“People used to put… fabric. Colourful ones. On their tables. T’was pretty.”

He looks down at the food, at the _picnic_.

“Not much use for them now, I guess.”

“People in the Old-World don’t sound very practical. Could’ve used the fabric for clothes. Now, we should eat the picnic, Max.”

Max smiles a bit at the awkward way she pronounced the new word, but he grabs some food and concludes:

“You’re right. They weren’t very practical.”

They watch the sunset together later on, sitting on the piece of fabric to keep the bugs at bay, and Furiosa thinks that she could get used to that, to picnics with Max, to leisury conversations, to being close enough to feel the other’s heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I lied, no sex in this chapter. BUT, in the next one for sure. Just gotta write it now!


	6. Chapter 6

When Furiosa wakes up, the first thing she registers is the smell of grass, sweat, and soil. Disconcerted, she moves her head and realizes her nose was nudging Max’s hand. It will happen sometimes, him throwing an arm around her as they are spooning, separated by blankets but sharing heat. She can’t bear to be held down, but the loose weight of his arm is okay. She likes to sleep curled on herself, shorter arm to the bed, knees protecting her chest, and his hand must have slipped to her face during the night. It’s no trouble: she actually quite like that he smells of yesterday night in the gardens.

Max is actually quite a heavy sleeper once he’s out, so she takes her time to stretch and unfold, wiggling until her back, from buttocks to shoulder blades, is snug with Max’s front, whose arm not resting on her is folded under his head. This morning, she won’t shuffle away, keep space between their bodies. This morning, she finally feels ready. Maybe seeing him cry was the final confirmation she needed that he is a decent man, one who can feel love and loss. Late in the night, he gave her two names: Jessie, and Sprog. He spoke of them with so much tenderness… Furiosa feels like no one could turn bad after having loved liked that.

She knows it’s ridiculous, but she also feels a little bit vindictive, just a smidge jealous of that woman, long dead and yet still adored. She wants to be better than Jessie. She can _be_ better: she’s with Max here and now. Finally, she wants to do something nice for the man, make him feel good, and comfortable, so he won’t feel like running away as much.

She’s aware she might not do this for the right reasons entirely, but above everything else, she wants it. She’s been thinking about it for days, has been touching herself when she was certain he wouldn’t know. She wants to know how his skin tastes like, if he’ll be noisy or silent, a talker or a moaner. She wants to touch him in places no one else in the Citadel has touched, and see the full nakedness of him. She wants his hands on her too, wants to know how different it will be, having sex with a good man.

With those thoughts in mind, she sets to carefully entangle them from the blankets, reducing the barrier between them to their clothing. She easily slips out of her bottoms, but won’t dare move his hand to take care off her tank top. Then, she sets to rubbing herself on him, unhurried, waiting for his mind to catch up with his body, whose already hard cock is nestled against her buttocks, and whose hips are moving along with hers. She knows the second he fully awakes: his body gets stiff and motionless.

 

She keeps undulating.

 

“Furioooosa?”

His question comes out with a groan, and he doesn’t miss the goose bumps it creates on her arms because he lightly runs his palm from her shoulder to her hand. She puts more pressure behind her hips’ rhythm. His hand goes back up, and her right breast fits perfectly in his palm. He plays with it for a minute, the fabric of her top pleasantly rough on her hardening nipples, and she keens, arching back into him, feeling every inch of his hardness as it fits itself along her butt crack. His hand skims down, and when he gets past the hem of her top and discovers she’s not wearing anything, there’s a sudden inhale. Two fingers dip lower, where she’s dripping wet all over the blanket, and he exhales sharply, following it with:

“Holy Mother of God.”

She has no idea what he just said, but it sounded a bit strained, so she grins to herself, and open her legs just enough that his whole palm now fits perfectly over her mound. She stops her rocking and, using her own hand, guides his fingers just past the lips, to the wetness within the folds. Then, she settles back on his chest, and waits, unmoving. He’s quick to catch up and starts exploring. He’s done that before for sure, because after spreading her wetness he finds her little nub straight away, and doesn’t hesitate to rub it.

 

Turns out, she’s the moaning one.

 

When he stops his ministrations, she wants to protest, but he’s merely moving them a bit. Now half lying on his back, Furiosa on top of him, Max can reach around her with both arms. He’s a tad short, which means her heads is hanging past his shoulder, but that gives him perfect access to her neck, and he peppers it with kisses and small bites as his hands get busy again, one of them on her nub, the other slipping two clever fingers inside her.

She doesn’t last long on such treatment and, when she comes on a long wail, he holds her shaking body through it, and keeps rubbing lazily at her nub until the aftershocks are too much and she gently pushes his hand away. They just rest for a while, and she feels his breath on her neck, and the suggestion of his lips behind it.

When she can think properly again, she reaches for his schlanger and fits it between her legs before closing them, forming a wet, tight space for him to fuck. Getting her idea, Max opens his own legs on each side of her. Knees bent, feet flat on the bed, he has enough leverage to thrust up and, fascinated, Furiosa watches as the red, thick head of his cock appears and disappears between her pale thighs. She’s not ready for a second orgasm, but the friction feels nice, and she puts her hand there, offering resistance at the end of his thrust. It must have been a good move, because Max utters a strangled ‘Fuck!’ and, a few erratic thrusts later, comes all over her belly in one long spurt. She rolls off him to give him some breathing space and they lay on their backs, side by side.

After a short while, Max grunts and props himself on an elbow, looking down at her with clear awe on his face. More than the sex and the mutual orgasms, that’s what makes her heart beat fast and her gut tighten, that look, and the intimate smile he gifts her with, and the playful way he scoots down and licks her belly clean, and his reverent hands as he traces the shape of her body. When he reaches her stump and carefully traces the edge of the scar there, made sensitive from wearing her prosthesis, she lets a giggle escape, which he answers with an interested little ‘oh?’. He then sets out to discover all the ticklish spots in her body, and she wriggles in protest, ready to kick him off her, but he’s not mean about it, just inquisitive. When his hands stray to the inside of her thighs, and the ticklishness morphs into heat, she moans his name. Pausing for a moment, he raises his head to looks her in the eyes and says:

“Jesus, Furiosa. Can we take the day off?”

With a big sigh, Furiosa sits up and shakes her head no. People would get worried if they don’t show up at breakfast. Max seems to reach the same conclusion, because, after a last caress, he withdraws his hands from her skin. They get up and get dressed, languid still and a lot more tactile than usual. Furiosa is about the get out the door when Max stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

“There’s always tonight, right?”

There’s something a bit shy in his voice, and she recognizes the way he holds himself as the stance of a fighter ready to get hit. She has no doubts that, was she to say no, he’d be packed and gone by nightfall. He _truly_ is a decent man.

“Yes,” she answers, “and I look forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DID IT!!!  
> I finally managed to have them get it on. 
> 
> This installment of the series is done, but I'm way to obsessed with these two to let them go quite yet. Post prompts in the comments, and I'll write one shots to match them :)


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